


Forsaken

by SomeRainMustFall



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Corruption, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Episode: s01e19 The Professionals, Episode: s01e20 Like Father ..., Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Isolation, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Manhandling, Protective Gil Arroyo, Solitary Confinement, Suicidal Thoughts, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeRainMustFall/pseuds/SomeRainMustFall
Summary: Malcolm wonders how long it’s going to take him to lose his mind in here.“Well,”Martin says, inspecting a nail. “I'd say probably not nearly as long as you think.”xAfter his arrest, the team takes far longer to get Malcolm out of lock-up. He doesn't have anything close to a good time.Whumptober2020 Days 8,12,17Abandoned + Isolation | Broken Down + Broken Trust | Wrongfully Accused
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly
Comments: 17
Kudos: 110
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Forsaken

**Author's Note:**

> Alt Summary: In which Gil, JT, and Dani don't act like _fucking dickheads_ and make sure Malcolm knows that they believe him. (You know, after the angst. But still way before they did in the show! I'm still upset. And you know what, I'm valid.)
> 
> Pls enjoy ^3^
> 
> TW kinda for brief, super undetailed mentions of hypothetical future abuse if Malcolm were to be sent to prison.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep.

He doesn’t mean to scream, to scare the hell out of everyone in the precinct with the sound. He doesn’t mean to strike out in unconscious fear, and he doesn’t mean to blacken the eye of the man sharing the holding cell with him.

He’s not even awake until he’s being pinned down to the floor, crying out from the pain of several men putting their entire weights into keeping him there. He’s confused, terrified, doesn’t remember where he is or what’s happened as his arms are wrenched behind him, as cold metal tightens around his wrists and digs into the skin, as people shout into his ear words that don’t yet make sense.

They tell him what he did, then, as his ability to comprehend returns. They call him unruly, violent, _crazy._ They say they can’t have him around the others. They mention the possibility of extra assault charges, and there are tears down his face as he’s dragged out of the cell. 

It’s too loud. It’s just _too loud._ Eve is dead and his family thinks he’s Eddie’s murderer and _Gil—_ Gil had looked at him like _that—_ “Gil, _please,_ you know I didn’t do this!”—and nothing, nothing, Gil had said _nothing—_ he’d watched him be read his rights and dragged away in silence and Malcolm had been too stunned to do anything but let it all play out. He hadn’t argued. He hadn’t struggled. Dani had handed him off to JT, then JT to another officer, and that officer had smacked his head down against the back of their cruiser like he was resisting before forcing him into the back.

And they’d talked. The driver and a second in the passenger seat.

“The boss sure trusted the wrong guy. Damn, that's gotta hurt. ‘Specially after the way he brought you in off the street? Trusted you? Goddamn.” 

"We were right about him all along. A buddy owes me some cash on this one." 

That’s when he’d spoken up, choking out, "You—you were _betting—_?" 

"That you'd end up just like Daddy Dearest? Sure was. Sad for Arroyo, but...hey. Some of us made some money!” He nudged his friend with an elbow. “That’s a plus, ain’t it?” 

“Sure as hell. Not that that's gonna help _you_ when you’re on your knees in prison, but…”

“Hey, now. We all make choices! His were just wrong. Ain’t our fault.” 

“Like father, like son.”

That shut him up. That triggered something deep in him, something small and scared from twenty years ago, and he found he couldn’t speak even when they asked him to later as they booked him, taking his belongings and patting him down before pushing him into the cell.

He thinks the dim, muted, dazed state he was stuck in is how he ever fell asleep in the first place. He doesn’t think there’s ever a possibility he could have relaxed enough otherwise, not after this.

He wants to explain himself, now, wants to apologize, to tell them he was dreaming and it was an _accident,_ but the words stick in his throat. He can do nothing as he’s hauled stumbling down the hall, another, and then stopped before a heavy metal door that they haul open.

  
“Wait—” is the first thing that comes out, but nothing more, and the officer behind him laughs, fisting a hand in his hair.

“They should’ve put you in here from the start. Trusting a Whitly around other people?”

“Probably got the order from someone who saw the name _Bright,”_ the second says, grabbing Malcolm’s cheeks. “They didn’t know you have The Surgeon’s blood in you. Hurting people comes natural, though, don’t it?”

Malcolm feels cold. He feels cold and weak and his vision is tunneling from how fast he’s breathing and his knees are going to give out at any second and he _didn’t mean to_ , he just wants _Gil, please—_

_Gil thinks you’re a murderer, Gil doesn’t believe you, Gil doesn’t love you anymore—_

He cries out, because it’s the only thing he _can_ do. It startles the second officer’s hand off his face, and the first scoffs behind him. “Get in, Whitly.”

Malcolm doesn’t have the chance to protest, to move on his own. A rough shove sends him sprawling to the tile, and he doesn’t have the ability to catch himself. 

“Oops,” the officer says, as Malcolm struggles to pick himself up, dripping blood down his chin from where his lip split against a tooth that’s undoubtedly looser than it was a moment ago. "Oh, he's bleeding…"

“I saw him fall.”

“Oh, yeah, he definitely fell.”

The second snickers, catching the keys the first tosses to him. He kneels down and fits his hand round the back of Malcolm’s neck. It feels wrong, only _Gil_ should hold him there—and then he's pushed on, hard enough to hurt, forced onto his stomach. The man digs a knee into the small of his back, and takes his time unlocking the cuffs; it's uncomfortable enough with the pressure on his spine, but in the process the man is purposefully squeezing the metal even tighter, and he hears the cuffs clicking until he’s gritting his teeth against the pain. 

But it brings him back. Pain always does. He works his jaw, aching from the hit against the floor, and says, “That hurts.”

“Aww, does it? Poor baby!” He wrenches Malcolm’s arm, and Malcolm can’t hold back a ragged gasp of pain. “Shut your mouth. You’re lucky we don’t leave ‘em on.”

“I didn’t do it,” he whispers, and it makes them both laugh. Gil’s face as he pleaded in his apartment flashes in his mind, the eyes he’d searched for familiar warmth and understanding inside and found them frighteningly void of. 

_Your DNA. This was not an accidental transfer. Too much to ignore._

But Gil promised. Gil promised to always believe him, _always._ He promised he knew Malcolm wasn't his father. He promised. He _promised,_ and Gil never breaks his promises.

Until...now?

The cuffs finally come off, and the weight is removed. Malcolm coughs out his breath and props himself up on his elbows, swiping blood away with the back of his hand as he looks up at them.

“Take this time to think of a better excuse than that, huh, Whitly? Because that one? Well. It’s as pathetic as you look right now. So maybe it fits just right.”

And then they heave the door shut, and it locks, and Malcolm is left alone. 

**x**

Time passes, but he can’t tell how much.

The tiny cell leaves hardly enough room for him to pace, but pent-up energy with nowhere to go doesn’t allow him to do anything else.

Three steps. Turn. 

Gil thinks he’s a murderer. 

Three steps. Turn. 

Dani and JT think he’s a murderer. 

Three steps. Three. Three more. Again.

The entire precinct and soon his family, they’ll all know, and he can’t do anything, not a _thing,_ because he’s stuck in here, he’s stuck here _alone—_

“Alone?” 

No.

Absolutely not.

“You’ve been ignoring me for _quite_ some time now, my boy...when are you going to say hello?”

Three steps. Turn. Three steps. Turn.

“Goodness, you’re making _me_ dizzy…”

Don’t look. Don’t look. 

“Do you think they’ll send you to Claremont? Oh, _oh!_ How exciting would that be? We could sit next to each other in _therapy!”_

Malcolm barks out a laugh. The sound is swallowed in the walls. He could scream and no one would hear. He could scream and scream and scream and—

“Give both of us a headache…”

Malcolm wonders how long it’s going to take him to lose his mind in here. 

“ _Well_ ,” Martin says, inspecting a nail. “I'd say probably not nearly as long as you think.”

Malcolm ignores him. He paces. He paces and paces until his legs are like jelly under him and he knows he needs to sit, only Martin is taking up the only space he has to do so he just _walks_ until finally one knee buckles and he drops to the other, pivoting until he’s got the wall at his back and he can slide down to sit. 

He doesn’t know he’s brought his legs up to his chest, that he’s clutching at them and rocking and shivering until Martin pipes up again.

“You don’t look much like a killer over there.”

Instead of moving, Malcolm ducks his head, hides his face and takes a gasping, shaking breath. 

_I’m not a killer. I’m not a killer._

“My, I _hope_ they send you to Claremont. You’re not going to have a very good time in gen pop, are you?”

Gil has to understand. Gil has to come for him. Gil has to _believe him._

“Buck up. You’ve made me proud. Minus the messiness…"

“I was _framed!_ ” Malcolm hisses, and he’s humiliated to find his vision blurred with tears when he finally looks up. 

“Don’t _cry_ now, my boy…”

He shoves his palms into his closed eyes until he sees color swirling in the darkness, shaking his head. “I didn’t do it, I _didn’t…_ ”

“Isn’t it funny how no one believes you? Not even _Gil?_ "

“Shut up…”

"Well, now, maybe funny isn’t the right word…I mean, it is a _bit_ funny—"

“Shut up!”

“If you hadn’t yelled at me last time you wouldn’t be inhere, so maybe lower your voice, hmm?”

Instead, Malcolm screams. It shuts Martin up, or maybe makes him leave entirely, because all Malcolm can hear is himself now, his eyes shut tight, and when he runs out of breath he takes another and does it again, because he doesn’t know what else to _do._

And then he sinks onto his side, curls into himself, and sobs.

Still, no one comes.

Not for so, _so_ long. 

Martin comes and goes, again and again. The Girl terrifies more tears out of him. Eve strokes his cheek, through his hair, and it feels worse than any of it. He cries, and he begs them to stay away, and they don’t listen. Just like Gil and Dani and JT and the police, they _don’t listen._

Eventually, he stops being sure that anyone is ever going to come for him again. 

He comes to the horrible realization that this is how the rest of his life will be. Claremont means sedation, probably twenty-four seven, and he can’t do that. He can’t handle that. He’ll beg them not to send him there, because being around his father every day again will kill him, because he’s _not crazy,_ but it won’t be worse than where he’s going to go instead. 

And maybe they’ll be able to get him into protective custody, but it won’t be enough. He can defend himself, but he won’t be able to keep his guard up forever. He’ll be exhausted, sleeping worse than he ever has before and under constant threat of harm. He’ll weaken. And maybe they won’t even wait that long. 

He isn’t stupid. He knows what’s going to happen to him there. He knows that more than likely, the first time, no one is going to be there to stop it. And to prevent a second incident, to not have to _deal_ with it, just like the cops here, they’re going to shove him in solitary. And that cell, somewhere likely not even as nice as this, is going to be where he remains, _alone,_ until he’s released— _if_ he’s released—or until he dies. And maybe that'll happen sooner, because if he has to stay like this for much longer he’s going to bash his head against the sink until the voices stop, until everything just stops, _please fucking stop, no more—_

“You’re pathetic,” someone says, but it doesn’t sound like Martin. It sounds like the voice in his head that’s there even when Martin is not, telling him how worthless he is, telling him everything he tries to forget until he’s somewhere so quiet and still that he _can’t._

“Gil hates you. Your team hates you. They were never your team in the first place. They let you in because they felt _sorry_ for you. People were betting on when you'd betray them. They hated you, all this time. You thought you belonged? You thought you could fit in somewhere? You’re _nothing._ You’ll rot, and they’ll be better off for it. Gil won’t even miss you. Gil won’t even _care."_

“Stop,” he chokes. “Please, stop.”

“Might as well find something to slit your wrists with now, because you’ll be wishing you did once the _real_ killers in there get their hands on you.”

He can’t breathe. It hurts so much. Everything hurts. 

“At least you made Daddy proud. He always knew you would."

Stop, stop, stop...

"But then... _you_ always knew you would, too, didn't you?"

Malcolm cries out, and slams his fist down. And then he does it again, and _again_ , until blood is dripping down from his knuckles and spattering across the floor and he tastes it on his tongue and he hits _again_ because the pain is the _only_ thing keeping him sane—

“Bright!” 

Hands close around his, preventing it from moving again, and he screams out, snarls at Martin to get the _fuck_ _away from him—_

But it’s not Martin. It’s not Martin, and the sound that’s wrenched from him in relief and the _confusion_ is pitiful, warped and gurgled through the tears choking him. 

“ _Gil—_ ”

He’s not sure that Gil’s really here. He’s not sure it’s not just another hallucination. Gil touches his shoulder and he flinches, trying to pull away, to make himself smaller.

And then he realizes Gil is speaking. He hears him, now. He’s murmuring, repeating his name again and again, until finally Malcolm blinks hard and focuses on him.

“Can you hear me?” 

Malcolm looks around, at the open door, at the otherwise empty room, and he nods. 

“Yeah? Bright? Malcolm, look at me.” 

Gil cups Malcolm’s face, his own creased in concern as he runs his thumb over dried blood, and Malcolm flinches away again, the back of his head hitting the wall and somehow bringing clarity back, just a bit.

“G-G-Gil,” he says again, quieter. His voice is shaking as much as the rest of him, and he doesn't understand—and then he’s sobbing again before he can stop himself, because he remembers that Gil doesn’t love him anymore, that he’ll never love him again.

“Oh, Bright. No, no, don't cry...Bright...oh, what did you do?” 

“I d-didn't—nnn—I—” he wails, coughing out half sentences between gasps for air. “I didn’t—Gil—I—I’m _sorry,_ I—”

Gil lets go of him, and he starts to cry harder, until he sees that it’s not because Gil's leaving. Instead Gil tugs off his tie with hands stained with Malcolm’s blood, and then grasps Malcolm’s wrist and carefully winds the cloth around his knuckles.

“I’m here, kid,” Gil soothes, and Malcolm tries to stop the noises spilling from his mouth, certain that Gil's touch is the only thing right now keeping him together. “I’m here, I'm here...I’m sorry. It took longer than it should have, the bastards gave us _hell_ —”

“Wh—what? What’s—Gil, Gil, _please,_ I...I lo-love you, I d-didn’t, w-wasn’t me…”

“I know.”

That stops everything. For a moment, he can’t even take another breath. When he does it’s wheezing, too loud, and it makes Gil look even more worried as he knots the tie. 

“Y—you—you _know?_ ”

“Oh, _Bright,_ ” Gil says. “Kid...kid, I _know._ I know you didn’t. I know.”

He knows. He... _knows?_ “But—but you—but _Gil—_ ”

He doesn’t know how to put into words what he saw— _thought_ he saw?—in Gil’s eyes. After more sputtering, he settles with, “You l-looked at me l-like I’m him.”

Gil’s breath catches in his throat. He lowers himself down to sit, and he shakes his head. 

“ _No,_ Malcolm. No.” He quiets himself even more, and glances back into the hall before he speaks again. “Kid, we have _no idea_ right now who’s on what side. We’ve got us, our team, and that’s it. We had to make that look real. For the brass, for _Endicott._ You were never supposed to be in here all night, and you—you were never supposed to be in _solitary._ ”

Malcolm takes a while to digest the words. Never once did that come up as a possibility, and he thinks maybe he’s not as smart as he likes to believe. Of course they’d needed to play the part. They have no idea how far Endicott’s reach goes, and to have any hope at all of getting Malcolm out of this, they had to, for now, make sure Endicott got what he wanted. 

He’s a fool. He’s been crying, breaking down, for _nothing_.

And then he starts to cry again, anyway, out of complete emotional and physical exhaustion, crawling forward until Gil takes him into his arms and pulls him against his chest, combing his fingers through Malcolm’s hair. The most important things in Malcolm's life, that Malcolm didn't ever think he'd be able to feel again. He loves Gil, he loves him so _much..._

“I th-thought you hated me,” Malcolm whispers, burying his face in Gil’s sweater, and the heartbroken noise Gil lets out makes Malcolm feel even more miserable.

“ _No,_ ” Gil says, and holds him tighter. “No, no, _no._ Ssh, kid. God, Bright, I love you. I’ll _always_ love you. I could never hate you. Never.”

Malcolm feels like he can really breathe for the first time since his arrest, and he even smiles, just a little. It feels strange, but the reassurance is everything he's needed, everything he never thought he'd get. " _Gil…_ " he whispers. “I really...I really thought...I’m sor—sorry…”

“Oh, Malcolm. It’s okay. I didn’t mean to scare you." He squeezes him, to be sure he's listening, and says, "I know you’re not a killer. I know you’re not _him._ "

Malcolm has never, ever heard something so good. He feels dazed, living through a cloud of sudden, overwhelming elation, and he nuzzles into Gil's neck, humming.

"I’m so sorry...I’m so _sorry_ , Bright…"

There's the sound of keys jingling in the hall. Gil jerks, and whispers, "We don't know."

Malcolm pulls away. Gil pushes back, gets to one knee, and looks up at the officer that peers through the doorway. It's the same man that shoved Malcolm through to fall, and Malcolm clenches his fist. 

"Everything alright in here, Lieutenant?" he asks, his tone...odd, not quite genuine.

Gil hooks an arm under Malcolm's and carefully brings them both up to their feet. Malcolm nearly stumbles, but Gil doesn't let him fall. "Care to explain the blood?" 

The officer looks Gil over, then Malcolm. 

"He fell," he says, and then steps back, gesturing for them to go past.

"Ah," Gil says. He takes a step, makes sure Malcolm can do the same, and then leads them out.

"He pushed me," Malcolm murmurs, and Gil gives an angry grunt in response. "I need to work the case, Gil."

"Court order says otherwise," Gil says. His eyes go from one officer to the next as they exit back into the main precinct, expression carefully blank and calm but stress reactions giving away to Malcolm that he's anything but. Gil isn't used to having to be distrustful. He sees the good before the bad, and it had nearly cost him his life with the Surgeon. Now, he looks at these cops like he doesn't know what he sees at all, paranoid and confused by Endicott's corruption, and for Gil's sake, Malcolm hopes it doesn't go anywhere as deep as he fears it does.

At the end of the hall stand Dani and JT, and Gil relaxes a bit upon seeing them. 

"Is he holding—"

"Yeah. Sorry, kid." 

Dani is scowling as they approach. She reaches out, gently taking Malcolm's chin and tilting it to the side as she looks at the damage, and then clicks her tongue and purses her lips. 

"Easy," Gil says. She doesn't look any happier, but a bit less like she's out for blood. 

"I'm okay," Malcolm tells her. "Long night." 

"Drinks are on you when we get this sorted," JT says, reaching down to clasp the monitor around his ankle, and when he stands back up he makes sure to add a perhaps too-confident, "When, not if."

"You have to let me help."

"We shouldn't even be talking." 

Malcolm sighs loudly, making sure they can hear his aggravation. Gil squeezes his arm.

"We're gonna fix this, kid. You just gotta…"

"Wait and hope," Malcolm mutters. "Right. Got it. Of course." 

They all give him a sympathetic look. It eases his anxiety even more, though, because he knows they still care for him. They still want him. They _believe_ him.

They're still his family. And they're going to solve this.

With his help, of course. 

Really, they should know by now that waiting's never been his style.


End file.
